[0:26] Otherwise.

[4:44] Lovely building was constructed in 1908 and held a funeral business for until 1966, and the current. It is currently occupied by the Wirth Center for the Performing Arts. So, uh, again, historic building as they all are that we talk about with this one, uh, has been the community for a long time. Uh, just some fun pictures of what it used to look like back in 1979. This covered up the beautiful windows with beautiful stained glass block, but maybe not quite the vision we were going for. They covered up some of the beautiful brickwork, and then you can kind of see that in 1989, it looks like it was at least partially uncovered. So I just thought this was a fun picture to see. Wow, what this building looked like without a heritage preservation commission.

[5:34] And here is what the applicants are proposing to do. Um, big 18 inch tall letters that span the width of the building, going from the edge of the window on one side to the other. Uh, it is I have the length here in feet 4044ft long, up there above the third floor windows, but below the parapet. Um, there is no architectural detail in that proposed area. No little rosettes, no designs. Um, and this meets the existing uh, Saint Cloud land development code sign ordinances. This is uh, this covers less than 15% of the building face. Um, it meets our requirements in that case, um, let's see here. It will not be illuminated. This is just aluminum letters, uh, cast in gold or covered in gold attached to the mortar. Uh, again, up on the third floor just says work center for the Performing Arts and on to our best practices. We want, uh, signs to be made out of traditional materials such as metal or ornamental metal or metal lettering. Check if you want it sized appropriately and in proportion with the building. I think that's pretty well done here. Has a simple and direct message. Can't get much simpler than the name. The graphics and colors are well coordinated with the overall colors of the building brick and gold. You can see that the letter style should be clear and easy to read, and the sans serif font is pretty easy to read. Placed at a traditional sign location, which includes the upper facade walls, which is exactly where this one is proposed to go. And finally, we want the anchor. We want to anchor the mounting brackets in the mortar, not the masonry, and the applicants have said they will anchor this to the mortar.

[7:40] Okay. Thank you.

[7:41] Are there any questions right now? No. We've got the applicants here like to say anything or do anything about it.

[7:53] I'm Andy with Fastsigns. We're working with BCI for kind of changing this whole building into the center of performing arts. So we're just happy to get this going.

[8:04] And I'm Jolene. I do a lot of the project management for projects like this. So when it comes to the questions like how is it being mounted and making sure that we follow through with all the way down to I manage the install team, so I'm the one who gets their security for our struggles in only the border, not veterans and those types of things. So that's why I wanted to attend, just to make sure that all those details squared away. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. I really.

[8:34] Appreciate.

[8:34] The fact that you are putting it where, you know, up at that third level, above the third level windows, as opposed to potentially covering the original Daniel between the second and third level. I think it's really important that we keep that historic there. So I appreciate the thought that went into the placement there.

[8:56] Any other comments or I would.

[8:58] Is there any plans to eliminate those letters from above or below sideways? Um, I mean, it's kind of hard with the space above them to put any gooseneck lighting or anything above that.

[9:09] From my knowledge and my discussions with BCI, there's no plans to eliminate those.

[9:13] Okay.

[9:19] That would probably look nice, but it would be.

[9:23] A little challenging up there.

[9:24] Correct.

[9:25] But they can always shoot it from the side.

[9:28] Yeah.

[9:29] The kind of lighting that they have these days.

[9:34] If they have something like that that wants to come up later, they'll contact. Yeah that's true. We'll see that.

[9:49] Okay, so.

[9:52] With that, I would entertain a motion. Then.

[9:58] Anybody?

[9:59] I moved to approve that.

[10:00] Okay. Do you have a second? I'll second it. All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion? Seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[10:17] That brings us to old business discussion of the historic alteration permit trends and status of the local historic districts.

[10:27] Matt or Candy who? S8:

[14:18] So who did the original? Uh, there's a number of folks that did the original surveys, right?

[14:24] So all of the original surveys were done by historic, well, Gemini and other parties. I mean, they're all historians, consultant historians. So.

[14:36] Right. Yeah. They're all professionals.

[14:39] Yeah.

[14:39] They're all. They weren't students. They weren't. They were professional historians that were consulted by the city.

[14:44] Except maybe there was one. I can't remember what. I think it was an Emily maybe. Who did the South Side or something. I think there was one. But otherwise they are certified historic consultants who work in the business, like Matt said. So.

[14:57] So that's one of the options. If we want to assess the condition of the districts, you know, certainly we can do as we have in the past, hire a consultant or we could do it more of a community task force where we use all of you staff and we supplement with local experts. That's option two. Option three would be maybe putting students in the mix, because students we have used when we did the master plan for the south side, we had them go property by property and say, this property is not in great shape. We just had them do a good, bad kind of average rating as a windshield survey. So there's a couple of ways that we could do that assessment. But in the past it's been done professionally at cost.

[15:36] There is like legacy grants on the to hire a consultant to do it. Those are pretty easy to get as far as if we wanted to go that direction. Um, that would fit within the criteria for the historic district Resurveying thing, I think it's a good idea actually.

[15:54] I think they could use an update for sure. It's been like three years and they're hard just to try to locate what you're looking for because it's all paper. Can we back up before we.

[16:06] Get to like what we should be doing? Because I don't even understand what we're talking about. Mhm. Um, like obviously the, the, these are not the historic districts, right? These are phases of something else. So can someone explain like what I'm looking at with that? And also Roman numerals seriously, like, oh, but that's fine.

[16:30] Okay, so it.

[16:33] Makes it more difficult.

[16:33] To read.

[16:35] Yeah. Good question. So, um, I think this will be okay when we explain what these really were. So when the city first talked about creating a historic preservation program, we said, where are those neighborhoods that have the greatest historic assets? So we need people to come through trained professionals that say house by house, what is contributing and deserves preservation, what is a property that's noncontributing and maybe doesn't deserve. So that became the criteria for establishing the actual district. So this was the baseline information prior slide can be.

[17:09] So those phases are the.

[17:12] That is the outcome. Those are the areas where we said there is such a concentration. The survey tells us there's such a concentration that they deserve protection actually.

[17:21] So that was it. That was like a quantity issue of like, here's where we have the most buildings to preserve or something.

[17:29] The highest concentration of contributing properties. Yeah.

[17:32] Maybe juice can help, too. Like when they first established it, they had to set like context. They did a, like a study of the area. So they selected like.

[17:42] Just to create a boundary. Yeah.

[17:44] And then they went through phases of surveying the whole, um, city, like each area.

[17:50] Yeah.

[17:51] So that's what the.

[17:52] So the Roman numerals are the highest priority that the committee at the time said. This is the first area that we want to think about. And then we hired another consultant for the phase two. That was just sequentially the priority of the areas that we thought had the.

[18:06] Highest.

[18:07] Quality.

[18:07] Those reports are on the heritage preservation.

[18:09] I'm pretty sure I read them when I joined, but that was like a few years ago now. And now.

[18:14] They're involved.

[18:15] Yeah, I know, but I, I'm a homework person. So I, I'm sure that I read it, but I did not recall it. Yeah.

[18:22] And those are exactly the kinds of questions. Let's make sure we understand the baseline here. We're talking about 25 years of history. And we're talking about maybe even unraveling some of that 25 years. So let's make sure we understand the path that we've gone down here.

[18:34] And then also grab the stuff that's happened since the surveys were done, because some of them were in the 90s. That's a lot. A couple decades worth of building change and history of the buildings.

[18:44] To what are the phases for to.

[18:46] That's the prioritization. So the group said, we think that phase one has the greatest assets, the downtown core, Main Street, if you will. So let's assess the quality of that area first. We could afford that and got it done.

[19:04] Then we said, what's the next area we should hire a consultant to do? S10:

[19:13] The end of it?

[19:14] The end.

[19:15] Yeah. Middle 90s was phase one.

[19:18] Okay.

[19:18] So that was ten years of phasing. Okay. Yeah.

[19:24] Does that help? S9:

[19:25] You good?

[19:26] Yeah, yeah. So in some cases we decided Nothing. Nothing in that area so fast.

[19:32] And that's if. Yeah. I mean, that is a good clarifying point because after we got the existing.

[19:38] There's a fair number. Yeah.

[19:39] Okay. Let's explain me. So the historic districts that are established are primarily the one, two, three, four. And so that's where you see five and six. Those are the areas that came last because they weren't the highest priority areas. But in the end areas like the six the hospital area was never established. It was surveyed. We kind of know what that area is, but we decided at the time not to establish the district. So not everyone in the survey is became a established district.

[20:14] Like Lake George is has a lot of historic homes in it and buildings and so forth. It would be the phase four there. And but they are not a historic district. Right.

[20:25] And phase three objected. That was the Saint John Cantius neighborhood. That said, no, we do not want to be regulated. We think this is a deterrent effect. Leave us alone. Um, so we did not establish that district either.

[20:38] Well, that might actually be an interesting place of comparison then. Right. I mean, because it's hard to. Right. Yeah. I mean, we need a control group, right? Like to figure out are the regulations. Yeah. The problem or not. Right. So maybe that would be a place to look for Saint.

[20:57] John Cantius and Lake George both, since they are not in historic districts designated versus South side and southeast side and Panton and so forth. Right. Something else I had the ability to go to a couple of the annual meetings, um, the last couple of years with the Minnesota Shippo. Shippo. Thank you.

[21:24] State Historic Preservation Office records.

[21:27] Right? And one of the things that was coming up was buildings that are 50 years or more are in that historic designation, which means now today, a lot of 1960s construction and up to early 70s is. So some of the brutalist style and some of the, you know, things that wouldn't have necessarily been looked at as historic potential buildings 20 some years ago when this was done now would fit into the criteria of being historically significant. Now, brutalist style is not necessarily my cup of tea, but it is a legitimate building style. And we do have examples of it in town, but they probably were not considered significant at the time. This was done because they didn't meet that 50 year criteria yet. So that's there's a whole additional set of buildings that now might fit criteria of being historic. And stylistically that weren't considered. So I could see some value, some definite. Reasons to maybe revisit some of this with that expanded, you know, obviously whatever was historic. 25 years ago was still historic, but we've added to it as much as that pains me to admit.

[22:55] So then the question is, do we bring those homes in and now we have more homes to regulate or. That is another question then.

[23:07] Or do we go the opposite direction and do some of the districts. Not justify designation any longer? I mean, have they simply fallen in disrepair and we want any. Investment at this point. So I think yeah, both are fair questions. And until we have the data. You know we won't know.

[23:25] How would you suggest starting?

[23:27] I think obviously the data collection is something that we will certainly do. It's what we've been trying to do. To answer this question of why is there such a dramatic decline? Uh, you know, our first question was, are they slipping through the system or people aren't getting permits? We don't think that's the case. So now we have to answer the economic potential impact, which is, you know, uh, property owner's incomes in these areas don't justify or they can't accommodate. They can't pay for the improvements. You know, when we do that data analysis, comparing economic and just building permit totals by neighborhood, maybe it tells us that story. And then I think the next step, another approach to answering the question is, um, you know, what do you do about it? That would be that survey, you know, redoing how many contributing properties are left in these neighborhoods. So I think we're definitely going to do the data. It's this question of what do we do about the assessment of conditions.

[24:23] It would be interesting to see. You know, obviously I'm looking at that and about post post Covid, there was a surge because people were actually able to do things again and get materials once some of the supplies lines and so forth. So. 2122 If I'm reading the graph correctly, fair amount of activity and then it's dropped somewhat, you know, a little up and down really bad in 2024. And it would be interesting to see citywide what permits were like during those times, because were we just seeing all through Saint Cloud, a freeze in building permits and so forth, because citywide something was happening? So is it or is it unique to the historic areas? You know, so that comparison, I think, is one that would be informative.

[25:15] And that isn't a subjective analysis. I mean, that is simply data collection. So that's where we can do that.

[25:21] Exactly.

[25:21] That's. But I don't think we maybe any or all of us should be doing the subjective task of contributing or not. So I agree with you. That's where we got to do the data analysis. Yeah. And just to explain sorry. Um, the blip, if you will, in 22 is the storm repairs. Remember we had that year where we had such dramatic roof repair and siding repairs from the consecutive hail storms. That's that look where we saw city wide, ridiculous numbers of those Covid.

[25:51] And people were finally able to do things post-COVID.

[25:54] But there's that one year where we had just dramatic storm increases.

[25:58] But yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

[26:02] How soon are you guys thinking about doing this? I ask this because this is just tailor made assignment for my students, especially the quick, you know, the, the, you know, house by house, you know, Quick survey kind of thing. At least they can get that level data for you to where you can rely on those. And then we can mess with computers and, you know, do some of the comparisons, you know.

[26:33] Again, the data collection side of it. That's we'll go right away with that. You'll get that.

[26:38] In.

[26:39] The second step. We'll do that right away and we'll get that to you over the winter months. That's a great time to talk about that kind of a policy question. But then if you have a spring class.

[26:48] Yeah I do.

[26:48] Yeah. Or we could then get people out on the street and go, you know, block by block and give their initial opinion about condition of property. That would be great.

[26:56] Yeah.

[26:56] I'm actually talking about spring because I'm on sabbatical this fall right now. Yeah.

[27:00] So you're talking spring as well.

[27:01] That's your first every.

[27:07] Spring. You know, your students could help with that. And then maybe starting in the summer, we have a consultant come on to confirm what your team thought. Okay.

[27:15] Yeah. I can begin now to.

[27:17] Have time to get the grades.

[27:18] I was gonna say that gives us time to apply, right?

[27:20] Yeah. There's a deadline coming up October. But then I think the next one is. I don't know. Candy, do you remember? No. Next year maybe. And those aren't too hard to get. And they bumped them up to 20,000 now. So. Which would.

[27:33] Definitely.

[27:33] Be helpful. And Gemini's the one that has done most of the ones in the city and they're still active. But I mean, I don't know if there's a preference or not. I think they're heading towards retirement, so I don't know. But there are other ones out there too.

[27:49] So this is to support stuff.

[27:51] Yeah. With that the grant could pay for the study for the professional assessment that Matt was talking about. So.

[27:57] So can we go back to the data collection part which you guys would be. It sounds like starting immediately more or less. I mean, I, you know, I think, I think, like I said, I think it would be nice to see the whole city probably comparison, but also those, you know, Lake George neighborhood and the Saint John neighborhood. And.

[28:22] And Hester Park is another one that has up near the hospital has a fair number of older historic, but is not in a designated historic district. So it's not subject to asking for historic district type permits.

[28:38] Yeah. So we need we need stocks of older houses that need repair, right. To compare it to rather than like citywide as I'm not sure how helpful that would be, but we should probably look at it. And also, I guess if there's a way to figure out, um, I have no idea how you could, how you would do this, but like, you probably can figure out median income, right? So I would like to see that too. Right? For each of the, any of the neighborhoods that we're looking at, I think that would be really helpful because I don't think there's one answer. Right. And I think it's going to be a complicated one, and it might differ in Pan Town compared to rental.

[29:19] Number of repairs you can make to a house you get. You pull a permit to replace the windows. You're not going to replace the windows in 10 or 20 years citing the same thing. So there's only a finite number of repairs you make to the exterior of a house, which we're in control of.

[29:34] So we agree that, you know, the overlays would be income. They'd be rental conversion that's occurred. Property owner versus rental. Yeah. Percentage in the area.

[29:43] And that's going to be very much higher in, in the south side than say in town. Right. Um, because of the influence that Saint Cloud State had, and I suspect one of the reasons in the, in the South Side neighborhood, and again, that's not on the most familiar because I live there is because a lot of even the rentals there are underpopulated compared to what they used to be. You know, they used you didn't used to have for rent signs into September. October. I mean, they were rented out. They were, you know, for the fall. And that's that's a change. That's an enrollment. So if landlords don't have full houses, do they. Are they necessarily deferring maintenance that they otherwise might have done if they had a better income stream for those rental properties? But since the income stream on the rental property is down, they're saying, well, we're going to defer this, you know, because it's not bringing in enough to justify fixing the siding or upgrading the windows or, you know, some of the other things that would be in the purview of this particular group. You know, we don't know what we're not dealing with. Are they changing things, you know, upgrading a bathroom inside or doing a new kitchen? That's not something that ever comes here. But from the external that may be an area where they're differing. And frankly, looking at some of the houses that I see on my walks and everything. I suspect it's an area that they're deferring as a hint, but that's anecdotal. That is not our data and we need the hard data. And I absolutely understand that.

[31:28] Census tract data that's readily available. So it's easy to overlay those things. So yep.

[31:34] So is this like a development fund type of a thing or.

[31:39] Well I think that's really the question for today is, you know, the data collection task has no cost to it. That's something we'll do in house. Do you want to get that data in hand. Do a little bit of a analysis of it and then say, okay, there is a suggestion of a theory here.

[31:59] Should we then spend $30,000 to do a survey with a consultant to prove that correct or not? S3:

[32:00] So would it be able to discharge at least part of that expense?

[32:04] But what do we want to get through that data collection and thought process first?

[32:10] What's the grant cycle like? How fast is.

[32:12] This? They do four of those. They're still calling. I think small grants for four of them a year. Um, I can't remember when the one. I think it's like October 8th is the next four years pretty.

[32:21] There's a lot of turnover.

[32:23] They do cycle through those pretty quick. And those aren't too hard to write. Um.

[32:28] We got one for our update of the design manual. I mean, it's easy stuff.

[32:31] And they've had a good relationship with the city. So I think they trust the staff.

[32:35] So it would make sense to not worry about hitting the October 1st and wait till spring.

[32:39] Right. I mean, I should say that that that's what I would. Okay.

[32:44] I think we'd have to be a little careful. We wouldn't want we would not want to bring on a consultant to do all six of those surveys. We're going to be selective based on that data. So that's where we need to wait to write the grant until we know the geography.

[32:57] Well, the downtown one be included because I'm sure they'd love to have new info.

[33:01] I don't think so. I mean, that's not an area that we're going to let go on, and that's great.

[33:06] Okay.

[33:07] Main Street to Saint Cloud as Main Street. I don't think that's the question yet, but it's up to you.

[33:16] So what do you just need? Head nods or are you saying go for it and you're good with it?

[33:22] So so that last comment was helpful. So you're really thinking about the are there? It seems to me what you're thinking is, are there places we should drop is what's motivating this more than anything else.

[33:37] But drop to encourage investment from the backside in terms of correct. You know, that frees up the owners.

[33:45] Yeah. Counter the deterrent effect. If there is a deterrent effect, having the regulator.

[33:49] If that is the.

[33:50] Issue. Yeah, yeah. And you're right. Because what we hear from some in the real estate community is that it is a deterrent. And so we're trying to prove that theory. We have a new administration that is open to that question. Is there a deterrent effect? So that's where it does come from. And one of the outcomes might be. remove historic districts from some areas.

[34:10] Now there's some synergy here according to the last topic or correlation. The last topic we were discussing about possibly, um, combining, uh, HPC with um, planning, zoning, um, and obviously this is correlated directly to that are we, have we had any further discussion, any further input where we're going in kind of direction.

[34:31] Yeah. And that's right on. And let's be transparent about it. We've been open that there is a question should the HPC and the Zoning Board of Appeals be the same body or transcend two actions to two separate bodies? Let's do it at one time. Um, if that workload is less because some of the historic districts are decertified, then that might work. Yeah.

[34:53] That is the amount of permits obviously declining as well. And yeah.

[34:57] Mhm.

[34:57] So okay.

[34:59] The flip might happen too. I mean, of course I'm in the business kind of in a way. But so like the workshops that we do, and we were able to do one at Emily's house. There are a lot of people who are really excited about owning a home in a historic district, and some of them have had questions about what it means to be in a historic district. That is, they have a lack of information.

[35:19] Sure.

[35:20] They're almost afraid of being in one and don't realize that it's not as.

[35:27] Yeah, yeah. It's not that onerous.

[35:29] Well, and that goes back to what we did with updating the manual a couple of years ago. And we did broaden some of the character, some of the categories as far as what was acceptable, you know, by coming up with best case still solid. Yeah, we don't think so. Kind of situation. And that included some materials and some changes to what this committee would be likely to approve, say, today that ten, 15 years ago maybe would not have. And that's still something that.

[36:04] Could probably.

[36:05] Stand to be better disseminated to people who are moving into the areas.

[36:10] That all the.

[36:10] Realtors.

[36:11] Honestly, I mean, I think the realtor community is a place to disseminate that information because they're the ones that are making these like, right? Like they're the ones that have multiple conversations with lots of clients over, right, right. And compared to the one.

[36:26] Options are interesting because I've talked to people who have been, and there are realtors who essentially say, oh, you don't want to, it's so cost prohibitive to move into a historic. And that's.

[36:40] So that seems to me like an obvious place to target in terms of trying to counter.

[36:45] The past use, continue education. And it has helped overcome that hurdle. And it's a very valid point. It's a good point to bring up. Um, I don't want to put words in people's mouths and say they're saying this and they're saying that. Um, but that was one thing where we had that, um, synergy between the sport and in scars. Saint Cloud Area Association of Realtors was offering the continuing education classes in the past, which helped to overcome some of those.

[37:10] That would be the ignorance.

[37:11] But now we've got new realtors, right? Like it's a yeah.

[37:14] We have a good turnover in my industry. Yes, that is correct for you that don't know me. I'm the real estate representative on this committee and.

[37:21] Um, and I'm married to a realtor, so okay. I mean, I'm.

[37:25] A good guy. I love doing business with him. He's a great guy. Um, but, um, and he's, he's said how proud he is of you and how much studying you do on the side before meetings.

[37:35] And.

[37:36] How seriously you take it. I'm like a show us we're happy to have her. She contributes a lot. Um, so thank you. Um, but yes, so you're right. There is some ignorance out there. And you're right, there's a high turnover in which may be one of those reasons that we should probably try to emphasize continuing that continuing education relationship with scar.

[37:55] And we did that annually up until Covid. Then we stopped because of Covid. You couldn't have those meetings. We haven't restarted that. So that is a model.

[38:02] And we've got the new guide, which seems like an opportunity to have a new conversation.

[38:07] Yeah, it's an opportunity for us to, you know, we have a, um, a breakfast meeting every so often, every couple of months. Um, and we invite people to come in and present. And that'd be a very good opportunity for this board to come in and present a little bit of material, talk about our website and what materials are there. So they, they are a little more learned. They should be learned if this is what they do for a living. Um, and unfortunately there are some ignorant people, um, but just like any.

[38:36] Every industry.

[38:38] Just like any. Yeah, exactly. Any, um which is unfortunate, but um, I think maybe it's our job to make.

[38:45] I think it is our job.

[38:46] To help them out a little bit more and to, to make them more learned.

[38:50] I think that would be a very good thing for us.

[38:51] That is a historical part. And I'm I'm wearing my African, you know, an outsider looking into To real estate in the United States and Jordan here. Yeah. There is a historic mistake that was made when the whole business of historic preservation and what it means to communities was introduced in the 60s, particularly in historic districts. And that was the appearance that these areas, quote unquote, are forbidden. I'm using the word forbidden in in a big window here, forbidding areas that you have to be careful what you do here, how you behave here, etcetera, etcetera. And that permeated the culture here. So even us that know better, we even hear our friends say, you know, this is going to cost you forever. And you know, you can't even depend on your door. You have to get a permission. And is that right? I mean, since the 60s, a lot of education has been going on, going on, going on.

[40:11] But it's not just people in the building industry S7:

[41:20] Okay, let's go to the chamber.

[41:23] However, we need to involve them. That's the people that really needs the education.

[41:26] Yeah, I would not have thought of that. But you're right. If people who want to either buy in, in the area or make upgrades and changes are running into a situation where whether it's they're getting a flat no, or the interest rates are higher or the amounts available to them are lower, etc.. If there's a financial barrier, that always complicates things in any situation. And that's not something I would have thought of, but I could see it could be something.

[41:59] Have you run into that at all?

[42:00] I don't think that's the case anymore. I think so, yeah. I honestly don't believe that that's present in today's lending society. I think it'd be illegal to do so.

[42:10] On the soft. I mean, it's just like it's illegal to get. I mean.

[42:14] I may be wrong, but I, but I.

[42:15] I have bankers in, you know, a lot of bank banker friends, in fact, a couple of the Wells Fargo and so on is, you know, these are quote unquote, people I know, you know personally. Mhm. Yeah. They will not say it just like we have CRM guidelines, they will post a very nice sign right there in front of their door, but then somebody has to make that decision. Right. And for banks investments short is in historic districts are one of those in the middle that they to me, they make cars based on quote unquote. what Siri and quote unquote, how stable that Siri is. We look outside of the immediate, we still have problems, huge ones getting money for historic districts if you own property there.

[43:07] So how about in terms of a sequence of events, we do this data analysis task. We sit down together and we talk about what would the messaging be as part of a realtor education seminar. Again, maybe that's early in 2027. And then we, you know, even at that time or later figure out, do we want to really hire a consultant to take on any particular geography, um, that we think is appropriate? So kind of three steps that would be playing out over time, but we definitely start that first step right away.

[43:38] Yeah.

[43:39] I think it's really nice to get the, uh, loan data for these areas because that's what will expose this conversation.

[43:47] That'd be another part of that. Yeah. Data set that we could, uh, acquire.

[43:51] CRM. You know.

[43:52] Exactly what of what area checks.

[43:53] The loan data of our historic areas, you know, properties in that area. Yeah.

[44:00] And of course, the assessor's office has, you know, quite a bit of that data set. So yeah, we'll have a number of layers here that we can put on top of what have been the alteration permits over time.

[44:09] So I.

[44:10] Will suggest that.

[44:10] Yeah.

[44:11] That's a good comment. So we can prove whether that's true to some extent.

[44:15] So do you think scar would be open to us having absolutely coming in like that. That would.

[44:20] Be always.

[44:21] They would want they it would be useful information to them.

[44:24] I've said on both our boards numerous years and capacities and yes, it would be welcome.

[44:30] Okay.

[44:31] You just have to go through the protocol of getting the C approved to the state of Minnesota, which is very easy to do, and presenting the itinerary. And then, um, uh, getting it in a timely fashion to the board office. Um, so it correlates during the educational period. Um, so.

[44:48] You definitely want to have it in.

[44:49] There. You don't want.

[44:50] You gotta find a new bill. He was our expert testifying in almost all of them. So let's find a new expert.

[44:58] Not even close. Okay with that? Maybe.

[45:03] We can figure out who qualifies to get the credits.

[45:06] Yeah, but. Yeah, no, it'd be well received and open. Mhm.

[45:12] How can I lose to see?

[45:15] Who knows? You may be able to get mayor old mayor back for his bus tour downtown.

[45:22] I bet we could.

[45:22] He's pretty knowledgeable. He's got time on his hands. He didn't get paid for this, too.

[45:27] Not a licensed architect, but yes.

[45:29] Yes. No.

[45:32] We need an architect that will figure out how to do that.

[45:34] So, you know we don't need one.

[45:38] All right. That will be, uh, that'll be some interesting, uh, updates moving forward. Yeah, we got our direction.

[45:46] We can run with that, can't we?

[45:47] Yeah.

[45:50] And then last on other businesses are administrative approvals. So we did a lot of windows on the bishops. Oh it's been.

[45:58] Busy in the chancery.

[46:00] Can we go back one second. Just because we haven't been meeting very often. Um, and, uh, I just want to say, I really do hope that we do something with students, right? I mean, I think that's a great opportunity for us to bring students into this and get students interested and excited about heritage preservation. And so, I mean, I worry that if we don't meet again for a few months, like, you know, there's a, there's a time window, right, of like the semester starts in January, right? So, so I guess, um.

[46:32] And plan to have a meeting.

[46:34] Even if there's no permits to consider, I think that would be.

[46:37] I guess that's maybe what I'm asking to do.

[46:39] Is two months for us to get that together, at least some of the initial data.

[46:43] Yeah.

[46:44] We'll be meeting in November.

[46:46] Yeah, it would be pretty tight to get all of this because again, I do unfortunately, staff other boards. Yeah. Um, so I think November we could that'd be pretty.

[46:57] Can we just make sure that we have a November meeting then?

[47:00] Yeah.

[47:00] He's pretty reasonable. Yeah.

[47:02] Yeah. Yeah.

[47:03] Yeah.

[47:03] If not, if you don't have anything, that'd be fine. But that would give us a chance to make sure if we're going to try to involve students, there's a.

[47:10] And then the memo for that meeting could kind of outline a proposed, uh, you know, uh, step one, two and three, some timelines, some costs associated with, we could do some research on the grant so we can really, you know, lay out a plan of attack and then either approve that or not. So yeah. So one way or another, we'd have a good conversation. Yeah.

[47:32] Sorry. Good idea. No, it's a good idea. Good idea. Yeah.

[47:36] Very much so.

[47:37] Okay.

[47:38] Ken, you want to go through the.

[47:39] Yes. All right. So administrative approvals. Uh, I think this one might have been all the way back in June. That is a church. They put new tar on the flat part of their roof. Uh, pretty quick and easy on that one. Oh, yeah. Recently, Riverside Drive over in Clemmons and Munsinger Gardens. They put more siding on the peacock cage and the doghouse. Uh. Huh. Uh, let's see here. The spaniel building, new Hvac on the roof downtown. And finally, the chancery put in 45 new windows. Well, I don't know if they put them in yet. Uh.

[48:15] Yes, they they have been putting them in. I live a block from the Chancery. It's been a hop and popping place.

[48:22] It's a lot of windows.

[48:23] Yes. Hey, I put in 42 and I live in a regular sized house. But theirs are bigger. Much bigger.

[48:31] Same configuration.

[48:32] Same configuration.

[48:32] Yes. Oh, yeah. No, the configuration has not changed. None of that's changed, but they have been very busy.

[48:39] Otherwise you have 45 new windows we probably would have brought to you. But these are truly the exact same windows. So we felt like we could do that administratively.

[48:46] That's where you can do the administrative approval really easily.

[48:50] But isn't.

[48:50] That.

[48:52] A lot of scaffolding is now down. So they've they've gotten a lot of done that. The scaffolding was impressive because that is the elevation on that is not insignificant.

[49:06] Any other ones that we are aware of that are coming or.

[49:09] Um no I mean I haven't had anyone, you know, ask like, how do I, you know, do I apply for a permit? I've had people call and ask questions about HPC, but nothing permit wise, nothing that I think will lead to a permit.

[49:24] We are continuing to work with the Diocese of Boston. Okay. What is the plan for this block as a whole? You know, we've had conversations about demolition of structures, more parking. So we've asked for, you know, what is the latest master plan that they'd like to advance for your review? We haven't seen it yet, so that might come.

[49:45] All right. There's nothing else. No other comments or questions or updates. Then we would call. The meeting adjourned at 447. There we go.

[50:03] What is that up there? S6:

[50:04] At what?

[50:14] My personal belief.

[50:16] Thank you.

[50:17] Sheila is the chair. So she.

[50:21] Was the.

[50:22] One.

Heritage Preservation Commission, 9/22/26

Transcript